Nov 23, 2009

The Memorial -- Foreword 1

This
is another excerpt from the book I'm writing on technology, terrorism, and my
time at DHS, tentatively titled "Skating on Stilts." (If you want to
read the excerpts in a more coherent fashion, try the categories on the
right labeled "Excerpts from the book." I'm afraid I can't fix the bug in TypePad that prevents me from putting them in the category in reverse-chronological order.) Comments and factual quibbles
are welcome, either in the comments section or by email:
fact.check.baker@gmail.com. If you're dying to order the book, send
mail to the same address. I'm still looking for an agent and a
publisher, so feel free to make recommendations on that score too.

--Stewart Baker

A

cold
drizzle is falling on the Pentagon parking lot. The 9/11 memorial is nearly
empty. In nearly four years at the Department of Homeland Security, I’d never
managed to get here. Now I’m out, with the rest of the Bush Administration. I
have time to pay a quiet visit.

I
don’t like the place. Flat and unadorned, it feels like an extension of the
vast Pentagon parking lot. The trees are scrawny, and the grounds are a
utilitarian expanse of gravel and rainslick paving stones. Past the sparse
vegetation and a concrete wall, traffic hisses and thrums on a highway.

I
think I know what the designers had in mind. They wanted everything understated
and modern. There’s a bench and a lighted pool of water for each victim who
died here. The benches and the paths trace the path that Flight 77 must have
taken into the massive west wall of the Pentagon that looms nearby, gray in the
rain. Each bench bears a victim’s name. The site is all about good taste and
minimalism. Security is tight. The grounds look as though they’re swept clean
each night to remove any trace of the day’s visitors, their litter, their mess,
their grief.

But
I’m not in the mood for good taste. The place feels cold and runic. Some
benches arc toward the building; others arc away. Some of the pools have names
in them; most don’t. The benches are arranged by year, from 1998 to 1930.

I’ve
come for a memorial; instead I’ve found some kind of puzzle.

The
visit was a long time coming. I practice law for a living, but I’ve spent years
in government. This last tour has been a tough one. DHS is a startup, begun in
the wake of disaster and assembled on the fly.

Government
is never good at doing things the first time round. No one knows what job he’s
supposed to do. Nothing is routine, and bureaucracies thrive on routine. Two
years in, DHS suddenly realized that it needed a policy office, and I got the
job. A startup within a startup, the office had to be built from scratch.

Everything
was up for grabs – policies, procedures, authorities, personnel. I knew that
wouldn’t last; slowly the demand for routine would crowd out innovation. So in
the midst of chaos – uncertain budgets, borrowed staff, no backup – I felt the
pressure to push new ideas and policies into place as quickly as possible.
Early on, what mattered was how good your ideas were. Later, what would matter
was whether your ideas had been vetted with every office that thought it had a
stake in the decision.

So
all at the same time, I’d had to build the office, recruit great people,
solidify the budget, and put a solid policy structure under much of what DHS
did.